In Between
by HPpeach922
Summary: One-shot. Draco attempts suicide, Hermione intervenes, both of them wake up not in a hospital but at Hogwarts, which is their in-between life and death, and try to deal with the events that led them there. Similar to Harry's brush with death in DH. R


Firstly, I apologize for being completely gone from my other story, I know, I have so much going on (which I know, of all people, the glorious ones at Fanfiction would be most likely to understand) ...so I decided a one-shot would be more my cup of tea. I've not done anything like this before, pleeease review it. ALSO: the bridge, although not in the books, is the one in the movies...that huge crazy massive bridge that I love. Just thought it'd be a good place for them :)

Please tell me what you think of the end...I mean it to be ambiguous. and please review! thanks :)))

* * *

Hermione awoke on the bridge.

Her first thought was that of vague surprise. She was flat on her back. She never slept that way…her eyes ran over the arching stonework of the bridge cover. Hogwarts, she was at Hogwarts. This was that slightly crooked but wonderfully high-up bridge. She propped herself up. Honestly, outside of visiting Neville, she rarely came here anymore.

_Shit._ She remembered watching a small flask glint at Draco Malfoy's lips, remembered her split-second reaction time as she dove after him, but it wouldn't be fast enough, they were both drowning…

Drowning. Drowning meant dead. Was she dead?

It was more a curious thought than a worry. In Hermione Granger style she began to take in her surroundings and tried to glean as much information as possible. It was a familiar pattern. If you're lost, think. If you're scared, think. If you're faint and confused and happen to have woken up at your old school instead of St. Mungo's- think.

Turning around towards the side of the bridge that looked out on the lake, Hermione noticed that he was there. Maybe he had always been there, she didn't know. It fit that he was there. He was not looking at her but resting his elbows against the railing, looking out.

"You tried to kill yourself," she said.

He laughed emptily. "You nearly killed _yourself_ trying to save me."

There was silence for a while, she was thinking of what to say.

"I know," she said quietly. "Do you think I would have done that for anyone, though? Not just you?"

It was an honest question, and he knew she didn't know the answer.

He looked at her for the first time.

"I think you would have. Saving someone in a pinch doesn't really have to do with _them_, you know? It might mean that you're a good person, or that you're protecting life… it doesn't mean _anything _anything."

She frowned. "But doesn't sacrifice not matter, then? If it's so… impersonal?"

"I guess it doesn't," he said.

He paused for a second before saying, "Granger…do you think we're dead?"

She bit her lip. For some reason, it seemed stupid to use logic to answer this question, but she did it anyway. "Well," she said, "death…it depends on your definition of death. If you're cynical and think that death is when your mind, body, soul-everything- die, then we can't be dead, because we can think. If you're more optimistic about death and you think it's just the death of the body, and the soul lives on, then maybe. We could be; we're here after all. So…if I couldn't stop it, stop _you_, then…I died as well," she finished quietly.

"I didn't want you to die," he said simply.

"I know."

"Granger? One more question." He stopped; thought. "Well, maybe not just one more. It depends on how long we're here."

She could not decide whether or not this was a joke. To be safe, she stayed silent.

"Why were you there?"

She looked down at her hands on the railing. "I followed you."

"Why?"

In answering the second question she looked out at the furrowed blue mountains. Maybe her life had been at its best here. In comparison, everywhere else seemed dead.

"I'm in love with you," she said.

He did not look taken aback or in the least surprised. She hadn't said it with weight or particular gravity, just said it. She knew he knew.

"I loved you and I was terrified. You looked murderous. I didn't think at all that murderous meant…" she trailed off. "You know. You."

He nodded. "Figured out why yet?"

"Why you did it? Or were going to?"

"Yeah."

Now it was her turn to laugh, a hollow yet easy and comfortable laugh. "I have been trying, I think, to figure you out since I met you, Draco Malfoy, and repeatedly I hopelessly fail. So… no."

"You got engaged."

This was the first thing that surprised her about him. She was whirring in a dizzy mental way, trying to make that fit, and once she was able to make it fit, to connect, she had a sort of wave of understanding, and a sudden compulsion to explain herself.

"I only got engaged when I realized there was… no way. I got engaged because I was scared, because I was overwhelmed, and because for the last months before I hadn't been able to sleep or anything and I figured that maybe something that wasn't you could manage to make me normally happy."

"What's normally happy?" he asked.

She snorted. "Not psycho. Not depressed, not lonely, not worthless… I couldn't be _happy;_ I just wanted to go from day to day not worrying whether I'd try something rash, go screaming crazy in the middle of the Ministry. And you have to understand how perfect it looked. It was Ron. It completed everything. It would have made everyone-except me- happy; it fit. It was an opportunity, however small, for me to forget you. It fit."

Looking at her, he noticed tears of frustration in her eyes, which she hurriedly wiped away. She wasn't ashamed of crying, he knew. She just didn't want to deal with tears; they annoyed her.

Hermione started again.

"When I went after you, it was because I could feel the insanity coming back. I was going to tell you, anyway." She paused. "Did you… it was really…it was really because of me."

She said it as a statement, not question.

He nodded. "I loved you and now I may have killed you. Good," he added bitterly.

Her forehead wrinkled in concentration. "We could be in an in-between, you know. Harry told me something about it, once…maybe we're here because we're right between life and death, and it's not decided yet."

"So…one of us…" he said slowly, "one of us could still end up alive?"

"Yes," she said, "or none, or both. I'd actually prefer," she added quietly, "that it were just me who's dead. I don't think I could go back. Not to be morbid, or cliché- I love being alive-lov_ed_ being alive- but I couldn't face any of it without you, really."

She said it frankly, which convinced Draco she was serious. He didn't argue, just said, "Me too. I mean I'd rather be…you know…the dead one."

"I figured you would," she pointed out, "as you were headed that way anyhow."

A calm silence fell again.

"Hermione?"

He said her name as if it was a privilege to say it but with trepidation, as if he was touching a cooling stove.

"Hmm?"

"What if we both go back, alive?"

They looked at each other. She felt the old fear.

"You know how I feel about you…" she started, warily.

He interrupted her pause. "And do you notknow how _I _feel about _you_? How can you not know? How can you dive in after me, knowing full well you could die, and not know? Maybe you're afraid, still. Maybe you've spent so much time convincing yourself I don't care, and you still think in some way that I'll leave you, and you're afraid you'll scare me off. If you won't say it, then I'll say it: if we go back, both of us, if we wake up in hospital beds with Weasley and my parents and everyone there, expecting us to just slither back into our sad, small lives- I won't do it. If we both go back alive I'm not leaving you, ever. If somehow we get a chance here, a chance for both of us to be happy out of our minds for the first time, I'm taking it."

He was flustered now, ran one hand through his hair, looked breathless at her.

"Did you know," she said finally, thoughtfully, "I've always hated you more than anyone else. I think I hated the way I knew you'd never, ever look at me the way I looked at you. But even through all of this, I love you so much more than anyone else that"- she dropped her gaze to the floor- "if that's how you feel, I'm never leaving you either. Never."

She did not look away and he did not look away, and an immense, almost unbearable feeling of relief hit her. She realized that he felt it too, that they had been waiting for this confirmation, deemed impossible by so much, for a long time. Suddenly Hermione Granger was sad.

"That's what I want," she said.

"What?"

"I want to go back. I want to wake up even if it's with scars or missing appendages and look at you, alive. I want to feel like I'm doing something right for the first time since Voldemort."

She looked at him. His eyes were dark; he worried her. She remembered why they were here, and suddenly she also remembered why she had fallen into the dark, swirling river, not knowing what was in that flask, knowing that it might have been something that would prevent him from surfacing: knowing that if it was, she'd have to die with him.

"You have to tell me," she said in a measured, low voice, "you have to tell me that if we go back you won't feel this way again. You won't try this. Because if you do, I'll do exactly what I did the last time. You know that."

"Hermione. I don't want you to pity me. I only did this because I saw my life stretch out, forty, fifty more years of the same," his eyes were still dark, "and I couldn't see one way that you'd be in it."

"Okay," she said.

"Okay," he said.

He held her for a long time, and then suddenly she said, "What if one of us wakes up? Or we're both dead?"

He realized she was shaking. She had not come to terms with death the way he had, and, honestly, now that he had her he was afraid, too.

"We don't think about that," he said quietly. "We stay here. If we die, we'll still always be here, somehow, even if we can't think. If one of us lives, we'll never fully wake up. We can just wait here. I'm certain that something will happen and tell us what to do. Until then we can stay…just know that if somehow you lose me, I've never been happier than I am right now, OK?"

"I'm happy, sure," she said. "But I'm so scared I can't even think, I'm so scared that I wasted all that time and now there's a chance we won't have any more."

They both looked out, now seated, at the ravine below, the great sprawling cliffs. Some sound yawned in the distance, several birds speckled over the tree line far away. They waited.

* * *

Somewhere else, a machine flicked on, hummed to life. A Healer was getting coffee, sat in the small break room that adjoined the ward with her head in her hands as the fumes of her untouched drink rose to her lips. She heard the faintest beeping- _No_, she thought. Still, she cocked her head slightly and removed her hands. It was louder. She shot up, pushed out the creaking chair. She bolted into the room and stood frozen in the entrance, gaped. The Coma Ward rarely got activity, but today, someone was coming back.


End file.
